HALF-LIFE: OPPOSING FORCE: THE NOVELISATION

Incoming

New Mexico

8:30am, May 17, 2000

Subject: Adrian Shephard

Age: 22

Occupation: United States Marine Corps (Special Unit)

Rank: Corporal

Mission: Classified

I sat on the slightly-cushioned, but very uncomfortable seat of the military helicopter. I stared at my knees, shaking with nervousness. This was my first real mission. I slowly inched my eyes up to face my straight-backed, non-shaking comrades in their khaki coloured uniforms. Only a few others hadn't ever done any missions before, but they at least had proper training. Why am I here?

Boot camp was an absolute mess. I signed up just in March and was meant for action in early July. The camp was ruthless and painful, but then the strange man in the blue suit who probably worked for the government came to the camp. I had seen him talking with the camp administrator several times through the glass windows of the administrator's office during push-ups session. Then, one day, my instructor came striding into my training squad's dormitories and told me my 12 week training had been accelerated. To a couple of hours.

Suddenly, I was catapulted into sniper training, squad leading training, pistol training, the obstacle course and everything else that was meant to take a full 12 weeks to master. Why did this man convince the general to send an unexperienced soldier into a possibly extremely dangerous mission? So many questions, but no answers...

Back in the helicopter, my brave and proud fellow soldiers talked among themselves about the mission, mentioning a name: Black Mesa. A helicopter whirred past east of us, over the rocky orange canyons of New Mexico. I could see the pilot, steady and calm at the controls. The helicopter hovered away from my view further north, towards the mission location.

Another, a vomit-coloured, double bladed helicopter, appeared. It flew steadily, at the same speed as us. Suddenly, and quite surprisingly, just to add, flew by a... flying stingray? I couldn't believe it. I rubbed my eyes to check for hallucinations, but afterwards, another orange stingray flew by. None of the other marines had seen it.

"What is it, soldier?" barked the captain. I looked up at him, but didn't speak. I never was interested in speaking, I held the firm belief that actions speak louder than words. My parents thought I was mute when I never spoke until the age of six, when I said my first word.

"Well, soldier? Cough it up!" shouted the captain in response to my silence. I looked back up and realized I would have to speak, or I could get kicked out of the mission. Was that a good thing? I wondered.

The flying stingrays, which I had forgotten about in my little moment, flew above the vomit-coloured helicopter. Are they trying an attack? I thought to myself. A small glowing light appeared in the stingray's stomach. It expanded to cover its entire chest, until it stopped.

The light suddenly extended into a beam. The beam pierced the helicopter's hull and in a few seconds, the helicopter exploded into a ball of intense flame. The pilot and crew were nowhere to be found. They were all dead.

The whole team of marines heard the explosion and started swearing, looking for the source of the loud noise. They grabbed their guns and searched every nook and cranny of the helicopter for some type of action. The radio began blurting out orders and warning from the ground who must of seen the explosion of the helicopter and the strange alien stingrays. Alien. That word... I had heard that word some many times before in stories and documentary, but now the word had substance, had truth, had-

White surrounded my face, I couldn't see. I heard another explosion. The helicopter we were in shook. The captain fell out of the opening. Strange green electrical currents shot through the helicopter. White again. My squad were screaming and panicking. We were being attacked as well.

The white appeared once more and I fell, probably, dead.

I woke with a start. I was on solid ground... and still alive! I looked around the landscape. I was in the rocky outside of the facility, possibly one of the entrances. The helicopter had crashed into a mesh wire fence. I was grateful that, instead of dying instantly in an explosion, the helicopter crashed, at least giving me a chance.

All around me, other soldiers were firing at strange creatures that were a metre and a half tall, browny-green with only one eye. Again, I was startled by them. I found a dead one on the ground and knelt over to it. A plane flew over head. It fell and landed just past our area. The force of the crash threw me across the ground. Suddenly, I was unconscious again.

I drifted from consciousness to unconsciousness. I dreamily woke to a small, blood-stained room and in the door I saw a medic. He must have been the one who dragged me here. Through a tunnel, a soldier with a rifle appeared, running out, shooting towards the darkness. Just then, the same type of brown humanoid alien appeared, who seemed to be summoning some strange green electricity, like the stuff I saw earlier in the helicopter. Had they caused that? The electrical current was shot straight into the soldier's back. The medic ran out, gun ablaze, to take down the thing that had just killed the soldier. I suddenly slipped into the dream world once more.